The area in and around Ashdown Forest is rich in the diversity of places to visit, from East Grinstead in the north to Uckfield in the south, Crowborough in the east and Haywards Heath in the west, and the whole of Ashdown Forest itself in between. The four towns themselves, although very different in character, each offers a wide range of shopping, cafes, restaurants and pubs, and each has a leisure centre with swimming pool.

Just off the A22 are two of the foremost attractions of the area - the Ashdown Forest Centre, where you can learn everything about the Forest, and the Ashdown Forest Llama Park. The A275, which forks off the A22 just south of Wych Cross, will take you to three more treats – Heaven Farm, with its farm museum, craft shop and tearoom, Sheffield Park Garden (National Trust) and the Bluebell Railway.

To the north, in East Grinstead, is Sackville College, a Jacobean almshouse and, just outside the town, Standen, an Arts and Crafts house by Philip Webb, owned by the National Trust.

On the east side of the area, just off the A26, is Barnsgate Manor vineyard with its tearoom and restaurant, its giftshop selling Barnsgate wines and its magnificent views. A little farther south, off the A272, is Wilderness Wood, a working woodland with fascinating walks, picnic and barbecue areas and a teashop. Both the Llama Park and Wilderness Wood have children’s play areas.

Just beyond the Forest boundary, in the north east of our area, is Groombridge Place Gardens and the Enchanted Forest, an unusual and challenging day out. A few miles away, on the outskirts of the village of Hartfield, is Bolebroke Castle, where you can imagine yourself back in the time when it was a hunting lodge used by Henry VIII.

There are so many interesting places in the area which are free to visit that you could spend many days here and still not see them all.

First, for lovers of Winnie-the-Pooh, are the many places familiar from the books - Pooh Sticks Bridge, the Enchanted Place, the Six Pine Trees, the Sandy Pit where Roo played, Eeyore’s Gloomy Place and the North Pole amongst them. These are all in the area north of Gills Lap, near the memorial to A.A.Milne the author and E.H.Shepard the illustrator, and there are many car parks close by. The village of Hartfield, where the real Christopher Robin used to live, has the magical ‘Pooh Corner’ shop, with the biggest selection of ‘Poohphernalia’ in the world.

Those with an interest in history will find plenty to absorb their attention. Stretching back through the centuries are two lengths of Roman road; the huge Pillow Mounds where rabbits were bred from the Middle Ages for several hundred years, the most easily seen being at Twyford; remnants of the Forest Pale, (the forest boundary fence built on top of a soil bank with a ditch on the forest side) erected in the C13th, and visible in Foxbury Wood and near Legsheath Lane; and Kings Standing, at the top of the Forest on High Road, where there was in Tudor Times a royal hunting lodge, New Lodge.

From more recent times are the Airman’s Grave, the Old Radio Station, and two World War II airstrips, the most easily seen of which is near Long Car Park, off the A22 south of Wych Cross. Of the many clumps of Scots Pines on the Forest two are of particular interest – they are just off the A275, between Wych Cross and Chelwood Gate and each has a memorial plaque; one commemorates Harold Macmillan, former prime Minister whose family home was at nearby Birch Grove; the other marks a visit paid to Macmillan by US President John F. Kennedy a few months before his assassination in 1963.